On Halloween night in 2020, a man from Greenville, Ohio was driving to a party dressed as Homelander, the psychopathic superhero from The Boys, when he spotted flames shooting out of a house and immediately told his wife to pull over and call 911. While dressed in his stars and stripes cape and polyester costume, he rushed toward the burning building where people were standing outside doing nothing, shocked to discover they weren’t sure if anyone was trapped inside. He dove through the screen door and his cape dramatically caught on a bannister before the Velcro gave way, sending it floating back to the street where a woman caught it, and he told her to hold it because he’d need it later. Racing up a smoke filled stairwell, he found an unconscious man at the top and knew there was no time to wake him as flames and heat closed in around them.
Despite being several inches shorter than the victim, he grabbed the man by his shirt and belt loops and carried him like a six foot baby out to the curb, where he performed sternum rubs until the man finally regained consciousness. The rescued man jumped up when police arrived and ran off, but was caught and questioned since he had apparently broken into the empty house that was being sold and passed out after possibly lighting a small fire that got out of control. The reluctant hero retrieved his cape and continued to the party close enough to watch firefighters put out the blaze, never imagining that his bad mood and costume choice would lead to a Carnegie Medal for heroism and induction into the Ohio Fire Service Hall of Fame. Five years later, his kids proudly tell schoolmates that their dad is a superhero, proving that sometimes heroes wear capes even when dressed as villains.
